End of Term Two & Studio Ghibli Museum

Okay, I'm not going to write about the rest of my Christmas break as the memory has been somewhat bittered by subsequent events...I'll just say that it was really lovely, and seeing everyone was amazing.

Righty, I've just finished my second term at ICU! This one seems to have gone much quicker than the first...and it was a lot harder too! Last week I had my exams and I had to turn in a long paper for my other module, but now I have no class until April! I do have to study lots of Kanji for Leeds though, ugh...

I have no concrete plans for the Spring break as of now, but I'd like to go out of Tokyo. I'm thinking of going up north to Nikko, a really nice-looking mountainous city with lots of shrines and temples, and a stunning national park. It's also the home of the famous Three Wise Monkeys! A couple of friends have been there already, and said it was really good. It'd be nice to see some of traditional Japan!  Other than that I'd like to go southwest to the Kansai region, to Osaka and Kyoto. Naturally I'll keep up with anything I get up to on here! It's been a while since I've blogged isn't it...in fact I haven't really kept it properly since September...hopefully that'll change from now on!

Something I've wanted to blog about for a while was my trip to the Studio Ghibli Museum in Mitaka at the end of January. I'm not a fan of anime, but I do like the Ghibli films, such as Laputa: Castle in the Sky, Spirited Away and My Neighbour Totoro. 

I went there with my friend Amii, and I really do recommend it. To get there you take a train to Mitaka Station, and from there you can either get a short bus trip or walk along the side of the canal for about 10 or 15 minutes. You need to get tickets in advance, which can be bought from the Lawson chain of konbinis for 1,000 yen (£7.80).

You couldn't take photos inside (something that was very strictly enforced), so I guess you'll all just have to visit it to have a look! It's really, really nice. Very hard to describe though...nice and old fashioned, with a big iron spiral staircase, 1930s style lift, and about half of it was a mockup of a studio, with all the different paints and pencils and so forth set out. I'm not doing a very good job of describing it, am I? If only they'd let us take photos! There were little scenes from the different films dotted around, such as the food stall from Spirited Away where Chihiro's parents gorge themselves on food and turn into pigs, and a life-sized Catbus from My Neighbour Totoro! There was also a smaller Catbus for kids to play on, which I wanted to jump on as well but alas, it turns out I'm about ten years too old :(

After having a look around inside we went up to the roof garden, which was small but very, very peaceful and nice (apart from the large group of Chinese tourists getting in the way of almost EVERY photo I tried to take). 

Up on the roof was one of the robots from Laputa! It's my favourite Ghibli film, and the robot was just about my favourite character, so it was an unmissable photo opportunity!

After the roof garden we went down to the inhouse cinema to watch an unreleased mini Studio Ghibli film, about some Sumo mice...which was very entertaining and charming. It was also nice to see how my Japanese ability is just about at the level of a six year old, heh.

Following that we went down into the courtyard area, and I got just a little carried away on the water pump.

As we were leaving the museum we had to stop off at the big Totoro for a photo! He's pretty much the mascot of Studio Ghibli. It's a shame he was behind glass, I imagine squeezing him would make anyone happy.

And thus concludes my trip to the Mitaka Studio Ghibli Museum. I had a really, really fun time and heartily recommend it to anyone. Be careful of the gift shop though, it's insanely expensive, but lots of the things they sell are beautiful. A fun day out, all in all, especially with the subsequent walk through Inokashira Park to Kichijoji for gin and fish & chips.

Goodness, I never thought I'd speak so enthusiastically about anything anime related!

James

Exams & End of Term 1

Blimey, that went quickly!  It's strange to think I'm already a third of the way through my time in Japan (sort of)!  

Although the exam period doesn't officially end until tomorrow, my last exam was yesterday, meaning that I've now got two weeks of holiday before going back to start the Winter term on December the 1st.  I've now finished J3, too.  The course consisted of a fair bit of grammar that we covered in the second half of last year at Leeds, but there was some new stuff too, and going over the old stuff has really helped me; I wasn't comfortable using a lot of the grammar structures we learned towards the end of the first year at Leeds in any situation outside of a written context (where I had time to think about how to structure sentences) but now I'm happy using even the harder forms when speaking.  My Japanese has improved a lot already, but I think that's mainly from living here, to be honest.  Next term I'll start J4, which apparently is a huge step-up from J3...bring it on!

So I had my end-of-term exams over the past week, and they went well!  There were a couple of hiccups, though.  My main Japanese exam was scheduled for 8:50 on Thursday morning, so I set my alarm for 7:45.  For whatever reason, my alarm just didn't go off, and I was woken at 8:48 by my friend T.J. phoning to ask which room the exam was in.  Oh dear.  I fell out of bed into some clothes, brushed my teeth (forgive me for not giving them the recommended 2 minutes of attention on this occasion), and cycled into uni in the fastest time I've ever managed.  I got into the room at just after 9:05, at the end of the first section.  Unfortunately, the first section was Listening, so I couldn't exactly go back and quickly catch up on what I'd missed.  At ten past nine the Listening sections were taken off us and we were given the next part, and from then onwards the exam went really well!  I've done well in all my other tests and things over the term, so the consequences shouldn't be too bad.  

The grades and marks we get at ICU aren't transferred over to Leeds, so technically we just need to pass everything, and then Leeds set us assessed things at the end of the year.  This helped in the case of my English as an International Language module.  Let's just say I passed that (with not-so flying colours) so there are no worries there and it can be left at that!!

Being the lucky fellow that I am, I have just come down with horrible flu the day after my last exam.  So I've been staying in bed, drinking lots, and watching lots of Qi and Have I Got News For You online (no change from when I was well then, really).  Hopefully I can get well soon, because I'd like to see lots of Tokyo whilst I'm on holiday!  I'll do a blog post about each interesting place I go to, like what I did with my Akihabara post.  I'm planning to go to Koenji (again, to have a proper look this time), Ikebukuro, Ueno, Harajuku, Yoyogi, Shimbashi and Shimokitazawa.  If anyone knows of anywhere else in Tokyo worth going then please let me know!

James

Photo of the Day

I can't fit all of this onto a caption, so I'll explain it here.  T.J. and I went for a drink in the Hub British Pub in Kichijoji a few days ago, and they usually play good music, but absolutely nothing special was coming out of the speakers that night.  After a few gin and tonics I went to the bar and asked if they had any Libertines, hoping for maybe a song or two.  Two minutes later, the music went off, and all of the many TV screens around the pub, usually used for showing sport, came on.  We were then treated to the entire hour and a half-long Libs' set from Reading Festival in 2010!  And all I was expecting was Don't Look Back Into The Sun or something!  So I grabbed a little photo on my mobile as a memento.